Burn and Rave

The reason why I wanted to go into medicine is multi-faceted, but one of the reasons is that I didn’t think I would have to worry about money. I just take care of people and get paid enough to feed my family and to help others. I neither had any intuitive financial sense, nor did I bother developing my economic intelligence through college courses. How wrong I was! There’s a lot that goes into being a physician…. paying off medical school debt, budgeting with a scant residency salary, and then as an attending there’s paying rent for office space, paying for a secretary and medical assistants and nurses, paying malpractice (weep), paying professional society fees, maximizing efficiency of office visits, and perhaps much much more that my naieve mind has not conceived.

While I did finally figure out how to do my taxes, I’m not off to much of a good start. I had been writing articles for the school newspaper’s health section and was surprised when I got paid for them, not much, but still something I’m quite grateful to receive. The checks were inconveniently located in a campus a few miles away, and my schedule was always inconveniently full. I kept asking to get the checks via mail, but it took 6 months for the checks to be sent to my house. I did examine the checks to see if there was a deadline set for me to deposit them, but no such warning was apparent, unlike my checks from college that gave me ninety days.

I took my time and soon it was another six months before I finally made an effort to deposit them at the bank.  Apparently they expire after six months.  That’s almost $200 that expired.  Ooops.  My lack of aggression in financial matters seems to have caught up with me.   I hoped that my smooth communication skills might be able to save me.

I emailed the newspaper accountant apologizing for allowing the checks to expire and asking for the amount to be renewed and re-sent to me.  Afterall, I did make a sporadic effort to have the checks routed to my house.  I expected the worst, but two weeks later, the accountant worked his magic and I got both a $190 check and a very important lesson in financial responsibility.